Untitled Spiderman Fan Fiction
by GambitsJami
Summary: When Spider-man saves a woman intent on killing herself, he must keep an eye on her and find a serial killer.
1. Default Chapter

Far above the night time New York streets a man was singing. The voice was off key, as tone deaf as a pre-computer fixed boy band member. Yet it was an enthusiastic voice. "If I can make it there I can make it anywhere!" The voice "sung" much to the horror of the sleeping pigeons.  
"It's up to you! New York! NEEEEEEEEW YOOOOOOOOORK!"

Spider-man finished the song much to the pigeon's relief. Tonight the web slinger was in an unusually good mood. Mary Jane had landed a rather juicy role and that put her in a good mood and when Mary Jane was in a good mood the world was a very nice place indeed. Even with bad guys to fight.

Remembering the bad guys, Spider-man looked down. Just in time to see a woman calmly walk out in front of a speeding taxi and sit down right in the middle of the road.

Down swung the man in red and black. On came the taxi, which seemed to refuse to slow down or stop. Quickly, Spider-man spun a web around the woman and swung back upwards, yanking her out of the path of the car, only the bottom of her tennies getting clipped.

Plopping her down on the sidewalk, Spider-man looked at her. She was young, late 20s, maybe early 30s, a bit on the chunky side but in a cute way. Dark blond hair curled about her face. She wasn't smiling, nor was she frowning. From her slightly slanted blue-green eyes to her naturally pink heart like lips she was an emotional blank.

"And, what, pray tell," she said in a voice as flat as the look on her face, "do you think you're doing?"

"Saving your life." Spider-man said, a bit miffed at her.

"Ah. Well, there was no need to bother. I'm trying to die, you know." She glanced down at the webbing still pinning her arms to her sides. "Do you mind?"

"Yes I mind!" Snapped the wall crawler. "You just admitted to attempting suicide. I'm not about to let you loose."

She raised her eyebrows, looking very bland. "If I explained why might you release me?"

"Maybe," Spider-man said, attaching a bit of extra webbing to her and slinging her onto his back. It was a good thing he had super human strength as well. "But you'll have to explain on the fly."

He expected screams. Fighting. However all he got was an emotionless explanation.

"I am incapable of feeling emotions. Hatred, anger, love, lust, I can't feel any of that. So I figured without emotion life isn't worth living." This was delivered so flatly that it couldn't even be described as cold. For coldness had emotion behind it.

Just then Spidy's spider-senses tingled. A second later he felt the weight slip from his back.  
Twisting on the web he saw the woman plummeting down towards the streets below. A pocket knife in her hand. Throwing another web, Spider-man swung after her, catching her just inches from the top of a bus. Up onto a roof and keeping a hard grip on her arm.

"Now look here, Spock," he began.

"No, not Spock. Spock could feel emotions but chose to suppress them. I'm more like pre-movie Data. Incapable of feeling emotion." Here was where she should smile ironically, instead she just looked at Spider-man with that bland look. "Besides that, my name is Kim."

Rolling his eyes under his mask, Spider-man continued, "Whatever. Now look here, Kim. What you're doing is really selfish. Did you ever stop to think about those who love you?"

"No one loves me."

"Now that can't be true. Your parents..."

"Are dead. Never met them actually. They were killed days after my birth in a car crash. I was still in the hospital. They couldn't figure out why I didn't cry."

"Your friends then, I'm sure they love you."

"I don't have any friends, Spider-man. You have to be able to care about people to be able to have friends." She was so bland, so without emotion that it was scary. "I cannot feel anything,  
sir. About the only thing I'm suitable for is being a serial killer or a computer tech support operator." There was an awkward pause. Well, awkward on Spidy's part. Not on Kim's for she couldn't feel awkward either. "Have you ever been in love, Spider-man?"

"Yes."

"You're lucky then. I can't even experience respect, let alone love." She shrugged, though it looked forced, like if she wasn't sure she was suppose to shrug there. "I've decided that a life without emotion is worthless. Now if you'll excuse me."

During this discourse Spider-man had let go of his grip. Without warning Kim jumped off the edge of the building.

"Not again." Spider-man said, diving after her. Webbing trailing out behind him as he did his version of a bungee jump. Grabbing her halfway down the building and bouncing them back up to the roof. Then back down, putting her on the ground. Glaring at her through the mask. She may not be capable of emotions, but she was really getting on his nerves. He lifted a finger, all prepared to give her a huge lecture when the wailing of sirens distracted him. "I have to go. Do not kill yourself while I'm away."

"You wish me to do it in front of you?"

"I don't wish for you to do it at all!" He snapped before swinging off.

"What a strange fellow." Kim said. "Now if anyone needs a make over from Queer Eye it's him."

Slightly singed and smelling of smoke, Spider-man swung on. It was about 11:30 pm now. The fire having not be huge but there had been a few people trapped including a nearly 900 pound shut in. He had tried not to crack any fat jokes. It wasn't nice or right. Still, it didn't help Spidy's back any.

Now, however, he was watching a police sting. An undercover officer posing as a drug dealer.  
Sometimes these things went wrong and Spider-man wanted to be there just incase.

It was here that he saw a familiar figure. Heard a familiar voice. Inwardly he groaned.

"How much would it take for a non-user to overdose?" Kim was asking. "Well, as a dealer you should know these things. I'm trying to kill myself. Because I cannot feel emotion and figure life isn't worth living without emotion."

The undercover officer's responses were muted so even Spider-man couldn't pick them up. Add to that the fact that Kim's flat, emotionless voice was so blasted irritating to him, all the wall crawler could hear was her.

Spider-man watched as she got arrested. Sighing in relief. Well, now she'd get some help and maybe stop trying to kill herself. He swung away. He couldn't stick around watching this all night.

Spider-man didn't know if he'd ever get use to the towers not being there. Every time he came here in the past four years he expected them to be there. Even with the rubble removed the place looked like an open wound.

He was lost in thought when something caught his eye. "Oh no." He groaned. There was Kim,  
staring as well. At least she hadn't attempted to kill herself yet. Quickly he moved down until he joined her, landing lightly on his feet. "What are you doing out?"

"They couldn't lock me up. I'm not really insane." Still flat. Still emotionless. Maybe she was telling the truth? "I'm on outpatient therapy but of course it won't do any good. I've tried it all.  
Had all sorts of tests, I'm not a mutant, no X-Factor gene. Nothing wrong with my brain. I just cannot feel." She nodded her head towards Ground Zero. "This is what convinced me. I saw this happen and felt - nothing. Not fear, not anger, not sorrow. Nothing. I just watched it with a clinical eye. I knew it was a horrible thing, but I could not feel it. All my life I've never felt anything. I never felt sadness when my grandparents died. I never felt rage or disgust or anything I should have felt when one of my foster parents molested me. I just never had a feeling ever."

"Perhaps it's for the best." Spider-man was grasping at straws. Thinking about what it would be like to never feel, to never know what it's like to love Mary Jane. To have no feelings for Aunt May. All the sorrow, all the anger in the world was worth it just to feel love.

She should've responded with anger or even laughter. Instead it was that same blandness. "How could it be for the best?" With that she stepped out towards an oncoming garbage truck.

Spidy yanked her back. "Could you at least be a little more creative?" Sighing in frustration he said, "Will you give me a chance to find out what's wrong with you? I know people."

"Alright. But if you can't fix me, you'll let me die. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

As they shook on it Spider-man felt his senses tingling. There was a scream and he grabbed Kim up and pulled her along. For the scream was nearby and there was no need to swing.

The alley they ran into was deathly quiet. Nothing. Not one sound. Not even rats. Spider-man's spider senses had stopped tingling. It was only his sharp eyesight that helped him find the source of the scream. The source was dead. A homeless woman, her hand clutching her left arm. Eyes wide and mouth slack in death. Spider-man took her non-existent pulse. Kim was calling 911.

"Odd," Kim said nearly two hours later as they said goodbye to the police and continued on. "By all accounts it seems she just died of a heart attack, but I still keep thinking she was murdered.  
That something killed her by fright."

"Well, if it was murder the autopsy will say so." Spider-man said. They arrived at their first stop.  
A non-descript brownstone. He had called ahead, not that he wouldn't have been expected anyway.

Dr. Strange was good about that.

There was another there too, of course, incase Strange found nothing. As Spider-man and Kim were shown to the main room where the examination would take place, Professor Xavier smiled at them.

Later that night Spider-man wouldn't be able to describe the scene. It was really a haze. Yet Kim sat there, blandly looking on. Not even taking interest in the proceedings though they were all about her. It was much easier to deal with Xavier probing her mind.

"There is nothing magical blocking her emotions." Dr. Strange said, looking confounded. "I can't find any reason at all she cannot feel."

"Nor can I find any mental block." Professor Xavier concluded. They were sitting at the kitchen table, sharing some tea. Only Kim wasn't in the room. She had been sent on to Reed Richard's place for medical examinations that she insisted would turn up nothing. "Which actually may be for the best. She has some memories which by rights should be very traumatic. If it wasn't for the fact I sense no emotions attached to any memories I would've thought they were the cause."

"Hope you don't mind that I let myself in." The man known as Mr. Fantastic said as he sat down,  
his arms stretching out as he helped himself to some tea. "I just finished the exams. I can't find a single thing wrong with her. No brain damage, no tumors. Not even a chemical imbalance. And defiantly no X-Factor."

"A new kind of mutant, maybe?" Spider-man offered. "Some gene that hasn't been discovered yet?"

"No." Mr. Fantastic said, shaking his head. "It's more like - she has no soul."

"Only demons have no soul." Strange said. "And she is no demon. She's human."

"There are stranger things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio," Xavier countered, "then are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"True." Strange conceded. "It could be entirely possible that she's something I haven't encountered before."

"Something none of us have." Richards said before slurping some tea.

Sighing, Spider-man pulled his mask back down and stood. "Well, thank you anyway. I've got to find some way to figure out what's wrong with her before daybreak, or she'll kill herself."

"Spider-man," Xavier said, "you're the one who promised not to interfere, but none of us have..."

"I'm starting to think she's right though," Spider-man's shoulders sagged, "life without emotions isn't worth living. Where is she anyway?"

"Right behind you, isn't that just so predictable?" Kim said. "There's been another one of those odd deaths." Her cellphone was in her hand. "I bothered the detective until he gave up the details. It seems a perfectly healthy jogger was frightened to death. Did you know there were 35 others who died in the same way in New York in the past 10 years? Seems to me there's a very odd serial killer on the loose, to kill 37 people by scaring them to death."

"Lovely. Just lovely." Spider-man groaned. "My life is suddenly a Stephen King novel."

It had taken quite a bit of reasoning to get to see the crime scene. The FBI had taken over,  
having finally acknowledged something weird was going on. Even with his enhanced senses,  
Spider-man could sense nothing. It was Kim who noticed anything odd. Having rolled up the victim's sleeve, she pointed to a little red mark, like a bug bite. It was just a hair's breath above where the hand had been clenching.

"Did the other victims have that?"

Calls went out. Records researched. Hours later after the body was gone the call came. All 37 people had a tiny bug bite just a little bit above their clutching hand.

"How could this go on for so long without the police or FBI realizing?" Spider-man grumbled later. Kim was once again webbed to his back. It made jumping difficult but since she didn't scream or struggle but lay there placidly, it wasn't too hard.

"Cover-up." Kim said simply. "When Richards was checking the test results I used his computer to hack into files. I found them hidden all over the place. I traced the cover-up back to a particular man. The one who's body we just saw."

"Why would he be covering this up?"

"I don't know, though I did find out something interesting. He had a son. Born the same day I was. He died in the same accident that killed my parents. Nice little three car pile up. Funny thing is, I've seen the crash site photos. There were only two cars involved."

"Wait? You're saying the jogger is involved with the killer?"

"He wasn't jogging." Kim was so bland, so emotionless, that it somehow made all this more terrifying. "The area was muddy, yet the bottoms of his shoes were clean. Also no bottle of water or even a wallet. He was killed at home and dumped in the park."

"Regular Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"

"Just go right. Trust me. Something tells me we need to go right."

"A feeling?"

"Women's intuition."

"Alright, we've been following your intuition for over an hour now," Spider-man groused. "And nothing. We can't just keep this up all night."

They were paused in an alley. Kim standing a few feet below Spider-man who clung to the pollution coated wall. There was the usual garbage and at the end of the alley, a single homeless man, passed out from too much gin.

"When Xavier was in my head, he triggered something." Kim said, staring at the man sleeping in his own filth. No emotion flickered over her face. "It was when he came across the memories of my foster father."

"The one who molested you."

"It was more then that, Spider-man." Kim of course showed no flicker of emotion, her voice didn't change. "My foster father ran a very lucrative child porn ring. My lack of emotion made me very marketable to those pedophiles who prefer to think of their victims as less then human. I didn't even really realize what he was doing to me was wrong until I saw one of my foster sisters crying. He had told us all that he'd kill us if we told, but since I didn't have the ability to fear, I told. He decided to fight. Took us all hostage. I saw three of my foster siblings die. He made me watch, trying to get an emotion out of me. I couldn't feel a thing, but I knew he was evil. So when he wasn't looking, I took a power cord from one of his cameras, and while he was bending over to get a knife he dropped, I wrapped it around his neck from behind and pulled it real tight.  
I was 10 years old, but I was able to catch him off guard, yank him back, then tie the cord so tightly around his throat. So tight he couldn't get it off. Then I tied his hands together as he died.  
I told him "I know you're an evil man" and then when I was sure he was dead I went and told the police to come in. And never once did I cry, scream, or even laugh hysterically."

Nausea rolled over Spider-man, nausea and rage. If the pervert hadn't been dead Spider-man would've hunted the monster down and killed him himself. He was unable to respond to Kim's monologue.

"Well, anyway Xavier dug up those memories I - I felt something latch onto them. Xavier couldn't seem to find it, but I know it's there, I can still feel it. Like a leech. Yet somehow I can anticipate it's movement."

Spider-man's spider senses began to tingle, then go haywire. Jerking his head towards the mouth of the alley he saw a man. Or what should be a man. There was the form of a man, but he was transparent, like glass. He was so focused on the homeless man in front of him that he passed within a few inches of Kim and Spider-man without ever noticing them.

Something, like a single tazer line, shot from the glass-man's right hand. Piercing the homeless man's left arm. The victim clutched his arm and his eyes grew wide.

Launching two webs, wrapping them around the glass-man's arm and yanking it, pulling it back,  
so the probe that had pierced the victim's arm was pulled free. The victim moaned and fainted,  
but was obviously still alive.

"Why are bad guys' motives always so transparent?" Quipped the normally more witty webbed wonder. However Kim's story had thrown Spidy's wit creator off and that was the best he could do.

The glass-man growled and produced a knife, cutting the webbing free. He seemed less transparent now. There was a slight coloration now, though Spidy could still see right through him.

"Bug off!" Glass-man shouted, turning and running. He was fast.

Spider-man took off, forgetting Kim who checked on the homeless man, called 911, and then nonchalantly followed.

Meanwhile Spider-man was finding it hard to keep up with glass-man. The fellow was faster then Spidy thought. On top of that he was able to blend in at times and often backtracked. If not for his spidy sense, Spider-man would've long since lost him.

Up and down streets, alleys, it just kept going on and on. Then suddenly they were in a building.  
Condemned. Spider-man made his way through the building carefully picking his way through it,  
sometimes across the ceiling or a wall. His senses tingling. He knew there was danger but he couldn't be sure if it was glass-man or the building's crumbling materials.

"Can't you let me feed in peace?" It was the glass-man. Whining in the darkness he so well blended into. "I'm so hungry."

"Your feeding kills people." Spider-man said, trying to locate the source of the voice.

"But I'm HUNGRY!"

Spider senses going wild, Spider-man felt a sharp pain in his left arm. He fell hard on the floor,  
clutching his left arm. He felt something being pulled from him and he realized it was his every happy emotion, every good memory. Pulled out of him. Leaving him with nothing but the bad.  
Uncle Ben's murder. Gwen's death. Spider-man could smell the blood, hear the snap of bones.  
Every bad guy he ever fought flooded his brain. And all Spider-man could feel was fear.  
Crippling fear. Unescapable fear. The Green Goblin dropped Gwen over and over again. Mary Jane was in trouble. Uncle Ben was laying on the ground, dead. The planes were going to crash into the Towers!

Then suddenly it was over. Weakly he looked up as Kim held the probe that had pierced his arm between her fingers. She raised her eyebrows and turned towards glass-man. Then took the probe and shoved it into her left arm.

Spider-man pushed himself up. Watching. Kim did nothing. Just stood there staring at the glass-  
man.

However the glass-man was afraid. He tried to pull his probe free but it wouldn't come. Panic filled his transparent face as he seemed to grow smaller, less visible. "No! NO!" He shouted,  
unable to pull free.

"He feeds on emotions, good ones, leaving nothing but sadness, anger, and mostly fear." Kim said in her Spock-like voice. "He's not entirely human, but he's not a mutant. He's just an experiment. Like I was. Isn't that right, Jeremy? Freaks created by science. Twins, born of different mothers. We were test tube babies, did I forget to tell you that, Spider-man? Implanted in women who had trouble getting pregnant. Neither woman knew that we weren't their seed,  
however, but some genetically altered monster. Made to counter-act mutants, but we went wrong. We were the mistakes. That's why Jeremy's mom had to die, and my parents." Kim's voice suddenly cracked. Her face quivered and she started to cry. "Created by the man Jeremy murdered! Why I still don't know."

Jeremy just screamed, seeming to shrink and melt at the same time. He tried so hard to preserve his life, yet he was sucked in through his feeding tube. Sucked into his sister's veins. As his last scream died, Kim began to laugh. Laugh, cry, and scream all at once. A lifetime of emotions filling her every pore, coming out all at once. Then she turned to Spider-man, an evil looking grin on her face. Teeth bared almost like fangs.

"Remember what I said? Only suitable to be tech support - or a serial killer." She laughed. It was a laugh that sent chills down Spider-man's spine. When she raised her right hand a little hole showed up in her palm. The end of the probe could be seen. Then, it just as suddenly closed over and Kim no longer smiled. Instead she looked sad. "Thank you, Spider-man." She said.

He was too weak to stop her. He tried but his webbing fizzled, completely out. No replacement capsules. She stepped on a spot on the floor she knew was too weak to support her weight. Then,  
she smiled, a real, honest to goodness smile. Just before the floor gave away and she plunged down with a scream that sounded strangely like laughter. Joyous laughter.

When Spider-man was finally able to get down, he found her. Bones broken in many places. A piece of pipe impaling her straight through the heart.  
And in the filtered light of dawn, Spider-man found a look of utter peace and contentment on her face.

...The End... 


	2. Chapter 2

Even though two months had past, Peter Parker had yet to get over the attack by "Glass-man"  
and the suicide of the emotionless Kim. Though he had lived, even though his happy memories had returned to him, he was still a shadow of the former, wise-cracking Spider-man. MJ noticed the difference. Compared him to the much more moody Daredevil. Then she suggested a vacation. Daredevil, the Avengers, the X-Men, Dr. Strange they could take care of New York for awhile. A few weeks in sunny California. A second honeymoon.

It was working, Peter admitted. The sunny beaches. The more open skies. The drivers were almost, but not quite, as crazy as New Yorkers. Just crazy enough that Peter didn't feel too much home sickness.

It also didn't hurt that for their first week there he hadn't needed to be Spider-man even once. It was just the two of them. There were other heros to deal with the crimes. Usually quicker then Parker could change into his alter-ego.

So at first he hesitated the night he felt his spider-sense going off like a red alert klaxon on the Enterprise. Mary Jane, who could read her husband like a book with a glass cover, said, "It's okay, Tiger. Go get 'em."

A quick kiss goodbye, and Peter Parker was replaced by Spider-man. Following the one who had set off the alarms. In a way, she reminded him of Kim. Blond, over weight, short. But unlike Kim who had no capability of feeling emotions until just minutes, seconds, before she died, this woman had an aura of sadness. A wound deep and bleeding in her soul.

She paused now outside a restaurant. People were entering, laughing, well dressed people.  
Embracing each other. One sign declared the place closed for a high school reunion. Another sign welcomed the alumni. The woman opened her over-sized purse. Spider-man saw the glint of cold black metal. His senses screaming to him now.

No one was looking. It took just one second to swing out, grab the woman, and take her to the roof of a nearby building. While California didn't boast as many skyscrapers as New York, it still had a few. The woman didn't scream but looked green when he set her down. Before taking her purse and confiscating the gun.

"And what, pray tell, are you going to do with this?" Spider-man said, dangling the offensive thing from his fingertips.

"A way to make them listen." The woman said, a hard, cold edge to her voice even though what she said came out like a childish whine. "Force them to hear for once. Make them believe."

"This doesn't look like a bullhorn to me." Chastised the man in red, waving the gun under her nose like a piece of rotten meat before snatching it away again.

The woman glared at him, her blue eyes filled with rage and hurt. "It's the only way to get the bullies' attention! For four years they made my life a living hell and laughed about it. They tore away ever last bit of my self esteem. Just because I was fat and a sci-fi geek. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair! And the teachers, the teachers were even worse because they would just tell me to get over it, said it would make me into a stronger adult! Well, do I look stronger to you? DO I"  
The last was a hysterical shriek ending with a sob. "And they still don't believe they did any harm."

Spider-man took an involuntary step back from the shouting woman. It wasn't the first time he had dealt with someone who never got over high school bullying. It wasn't that long ago that a former bullied classmate had covered himself with vibratium. Still, he held onto the gun. "This isn't going to make things better."

"Oh don't be stupid." The woman said, sniffling. "It's not a real gun. It's a prop and it's loaded with blanks."

Not really trusting her, Spider-man checked the gun. An old fashion revolver-type of gun, he swung the chambers out and looked. She was right. It was loaded with blanks.

So why was his spider-sense still going wild?

Screams came from the restaurant. Looking down over the edge of the roof, Spider-man saw a man standing outside it. His arm around the neck of an obvious jock going to seed. The jock had fear in his eyes and Spider-man realized that the attacker's arm was wrapping around the jock's neck like a boa constrictor.

"Oh my God," whispered the woman, "it's Barry."

In the mythical time of 1991...

Norton "Buster" Adamson was the best freshman football player at Harborside School. Everyone already loved him in only the three months since school had started. Even the seniors.

There were a few that hated him though. Barry Gilman was one and so did his group of friends.  
Sandra James was another.

Neither Barry and his friends nor Sandra even spoke to each other, but all six shared the same deep, venomous hatred of old "Sporty Norty." For good old Nort was a big, bad bully and his popularity caused others to pick on them too.

Barry at least had his four friends, Angela, Roger, Ash, and Fred. For all five shared one thing in common. They were the only mutants in the school.

Sandra had no one except herself. Fat, short, a drama, choir, and science fiction geek, she was equally ostracized by all. Though she had more acting and singing talent in her little toe then the drama and choir departments put together, both teachers of the classes ignored her because of her weight. Thinking with the Californian attitude that people don't care about talent, they just want someone to drool over. Looks always more important in the golden coastal state then anything else. Add to that her tendency to quote Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation,  
Sandra was more looked down upon then the mutants.

Most of Barry's group had no major powers. Ash made small, colorful sparks that occasionally were used to light things on fire. Angela never showed what she could do, but it was rumored she could speak to animals. Roger and Fred, mirror image twins, had the abilities to do perfect impressions. Their Elvis was uncanny. However Fred's words when he did his impressions were backwards.

Barry stretched. Mr. Fantastic type stretching. Add to that super strength that Mr. Fantastic couldn't hope to match. As for his appearance, well, there was a reason he was named Barry. He looked like a young Barry Manilow. What the singer must've looked like as a teenager. There were subtle differences. A slightly different shade of blue in his eyes. The nose just a hair longer,  
or maybe he was stretching it always to make himself look different. The hair had more blond in it then brown. Still, the resemblance was there, and so he was named Barry.

In California they like to pretend they're so liberal, so open minded. They brag about voting for the democratic candidate, even when the one running had no business being in office and even they knew it. They're for gay rights, women's rights, prisoner's rights, rights to privacy even when it puts their own children at risk. To an extent they even claim to be for mutant rights.

Hypocrites, the entire lot of them.

It started that day when Buster threw the cookie his mom so lovingly made for him at Sandra.  
Mooing. His friends joined in, pelting her with various foods as she walked by, making barnyard noises. Calling her "Miss Piggy" and other names referring to her weight. One asked her where her Storm Troopers were.

That was the only time she responded. "That's Star Wars, not Star Trek, you dolt."

This earned her another round of name calling. She turned her back to them, even as teachers walked by and did nothing. They never did anything. Claimed it was good for a child's character to deal with these things on their own.

The truth was, if it wasn't for the fact her parents had spanked her as a child, Sandra would bring a gun to school and kill them all. Well, not kill them, but scare, maybe wound them a little. But Sandra was scared what her parents would do and how disappointed they'd be. The American justice system was a joke. She knew she could claim temporary insanity and get off light. Her parents wouldn't hesitate to put her across their knees.

"Why don't you do something? Retaliate?" The questions came from Barry, leaning against a wall with his friends around him, doing various things.

Sandra shrugged and looked at her feet before mumbling. "It doesn't do any good. If you talk back they get worse, if you ignore them they keep at it even more. I can't fight. I'm not special like you guys."

"Special." Angela snorted, looking up from her biology textbook. "You mean freaks."

"No, I mean special." She looked at them now, and there was actually a tinge of jealousy in her eyes. "Talents that cannot be fully copied or repeated. There'll always be better actors, better singers, better anything. But there'll never be someone with your exact talents. Your special combinations."

They snorted and laughed, but somehow they all looked pleased. They had never been praised like that before. Heck, most of them were in foster homes except for Barry who's mother loved him no matter what.

"Hey, look! The cow's talkin' to the muties!" Buster said with a laugh, approaching with his gang. "Can't say I'm surprised. They say the girl-mutie can talk to animals. Is it true, Sandy?  
Can she actually understand you?"

Sandra curled up into herself. Staring at her feet. Just taking it.

"Leave her alone." It was Barry again. To the shock of everyone, even his friends. "What did she ever do to you to deserve this?"

"She was born." Norton replied, grinning like a shark. "But maybe you want some, eh you big nosed mutie freak? You want some of this?"

The teachers and security guards milled about but did nothing. After all, everyone liked Norton.  
He could probably get the school to state someday. Still, guilt ate at one or two of them.

"Stop it, Sporty Norty." The voice was soft, a whisper, and yet somehow strong. Sandra raised her eyes to Buster. "Leave him alone. Leave all of us alone."

"And what are you going to do about it, fatty?" Norton loomed over her. Angry she was challenging him. "Well?" He pushed her just a little and in return she glared at him. Glared so hard that he was actually afraid. Yet instead of showing it, he curled his hand into a fist and swung at her, hitting her before anyone could react.

Barry jumped on Buster's back. They struggled but Barry was obviously stronger, quicker. The others on both side just stood by for already teachers and security guards were rushing in. Yet Barry wouldn't let go.

"Barry, Barry stop! You're going to kill him and he isn't worth it!" Sandra shouted as a teacher tried to drag her away. "Please, Barry, don't!"

Listening to her, Barry released Norton. Allowed himself to be dragged away. But not without one last look at Sandra.

For a few days afterwards, people tried to blame Barry. Said he and his mutant friends started it.  
Sandra though, with her black eye, stood up and clearly stated it was Norton who started it.  
Norton who belittled them all and hit her first. Barry was just trying to defend her. She said this to the police, said it to the reporters, said it to the FOH who came to protest at her school and even on her front lawn.

Norton was suspended. Barry, Sandra, and the others treated worse then ever when the school lost it's next game. Even by the teachers. His group became a group of six, but not for long.  
Angela was moved to another foster home, farther away. The twins mysteriously vanished one night. Ash, well, he couldn't take it anymore and hung himself.

So it was only the two of them against the whole school, which to them was their world. Then Barry's mom hit the Lottery and at the end of their junior year, he left. Going off to a private school somewhere far away. They wrote for awhile. Then the letters stopped coming from his end.

Sandra faced the rest of the time in Harborside alone. With no Barry to protect her anymore,  
people were worse to her then ever. Especially Norton and his friends. The teachers did nothing unless it became physical. Sandra begged her parents to let her change schools, sue them,  
something, anything. They wanted to, there just wasn't the time or the money. They tried to comfort her the best they could. Telling her to "just ignore them and they'll get bored." They were wrong. It just got worse. Once a dead pig from biology class was in her gym locker.  
Another time she found the words "Mutie Lover" written in her library book. Her grades suffered and she withdrew more and more into a fantasy world. Crying herself to sleep.

Vowing one day she'd tell them how they ruined her life. Force them to listen.

Now back to the current reality...

"You've got to put me back down there. Barry's going to kill Norton for sure this time." The woman was saying, yanking at Spider-man's costume, stalling him. "Please, he'll listen to me."

Spider-man wanted to leave her behind. Tell her she'd only slow him down, but he saw the look in her eyes. Leaving the prop gun out of her reach, he grabbed her up and swung down.  
Scattering the crowd.

"Barry!" The woman shouted, moving forward. "Barry it's Sandra. Don't do this Barry. Please."

Barry paused, relaxed his grip on the one Sandra had called Norton. His eyes suddenly not as wild. "Sandra?"

It was then that Norton decided to slip up. "Well, now Miss Piggy's here. The gang's finally together again."

"SHUT UP, JUST SHUT UP NORTON!" Barry shouted, applying slow pressure.

Now Spider-man stepped in, flinging his webs out, grabbing Barry's wrists with them and pulling them away. He was strong, but Spider-man had the advantage of getting special leverage.  
Jumping along a lamp post, and pulling until Barry's arms slackened and Norton wiggled out.

In return, Barry whipped his arms back, yanking Spider-man from his perch. Smashing him into the restaurant. "Mind your own business, Web-boy!" He shouted.

Spider-man would've had a witty come-back, except that the air had been knocked from his lungs. And he had to admit, he just wasn't fully recovered from the encounter with Glass-man.  
He just wasn't himself.

As soon as he could recover, he shot his webbing at Barry, wrapping him in a cocoon. Quickly ejecting the now empty web capsules and replacing them.

"No!" Barry shouted. "You don't understand!" He was struggling to break through the webbing.  
"Sandra, help me! Norton is dangerous!"

"Only dangerous person I see around here is you." Spider-man replied, flipping down between Barry and Norton.

The webbing was starting to snap under the strain. Sandra was pausing, torn between her old friendship and her moral beliefs.

"I'm telling you, he's a murderer! Sandra, Ash never killed himself, Norton did it. He also killed the twins!" The webbing began to break as Barry struggled. "I have proof but the police won't believe me because I'm a mutant! So I came to make him confess!"

"Don't listen to them, Spider-man." Norton said, sounding a little panicked. "How could I kill anyone? Let alone three mutants!"

"Liar!" Barry roared.

The last strands were breaking and Spider-man made the quick choice to wrap Barry up again.  
However at that moment Sandra stepped in the way and so she ended up wrapped from head to toe. Spider-man cursed and yanked some back, freeing her face so she could breath.

Barry could've taken advantage of this moment to grab Norton again. Instead he pulled Sandra away from Spider-man and began to rip the webbing from her. Norton began to laugh.

"Look, everyone! The mutant freak loves the wide-load!" He called out.

Only a few laughed. Most too horrified by the original attack to even move. There were a few uncomfortable chuckles. Spider-man turned to the bully, in shock.

"Do you never learn? Did you never grow up?" The wall crawler asked.

The bully snorted. "At least I'm not still wearing footie pyjamas, freak."

As Peter Parker, he was use to being bullied. Tormented. In high school Peter had been everyone's physical and verbal punching bag. And yet, this one small taunt, a mere nothing, not even well thought out, hurt Spider-man deep down to the soul.

"Don't." He heard Barry saying. "Don't let it affect you. That's how he does it. He - he feeds off the negative emotions that he creates."

Norton grinned a shark's grin. Hunger danced in his eyes. "Okay, so I did kill them - they were worthless to me. No longer providing any food." He laughed, moving closer to Spider-man.  
"Freak. Web slinging mutant freak. Do you have a girlfriend, freak? No, in an outfit like that you're more likely to have a boyfriend."

Each word stung like a knife and once again he couldn't come up with a snappy comeback.  
Instead he was able to put two and two together. "You're like Kim, like her brother. You were created to kill mutants."

"So you have more then web for brains!" Norton jeered.

It was different then what Glass-man did. He had drained all positive emotions, leaving the negative emotions to scare the victims to death. Norton created negative emotions, drowning out the positive ones, hiding them. Then feeding on the psychic vibrations this caused. Even now Spider-man could see him sucking in the air close to him. Like a blue whale sucking in sea water to shift out plankton.

"You are all idiots! All fools!" Norton crowed at the crowd. "So quick to follow me in high school because I was so strong, so fast, and so much better then the rest of you idiots, morons,  
fat little cows..." His eyes turned towards Sandra as Barry ripped the last strands of webbing from her.

Spider-man forced his feet, suddenly feeling like lead, so he was more firmly between the jock and his intended targets. "I don't think so, buddy." 'Buddy?' the web slinger thought to himself,  
geez, he was losing it.

"Buddy?" Norton snorted. "Is that the best the famous Spider-man wit came come up with?"

Ouch, that hurt. And the more it hurt, the more Spider-man flashed back to his teenage years as awkward Peter Parker. The tripping, the name calling, the general disrespect. Trying to avoid them. Not succeeding.

Norton's fist slammed into Spider-man's gut. The jock gone to seed look was mysteriously gone.  
Now he looked like the teenage terror he must've been. With every punch he called out another insult. To Spider-man, to Barry, Sandra, to the crowd itself. At some point the media showed up.  
Even as Barry tried to save Spider-man, but he too was overwhelmed by the jock's punches.  
Norton was getting stronger.

"Leave them alone!" A woman screamed out. It was Sandra, running in, an empty trash can over her head. She slammed it against Norton's back. "I won't let you hurt them!"

Norton stumbled. Wrinkles appeared around his eyes, but only for a moment. Now he spun around and grabbed Sandra by the throat. "Oink, oink, little piggy." He growled out.

Barry stretched his arms out, grabbing Norton, pulling his head back. "Leave her alone!"

Spider-man watched as grey suddenly streaked Norton's hair. That's when Spidy got it. Norton fed on negative energy that he created by bullying and insulting. Positive energy hurt him,  
poisoned him.

Positive energy like - true love.

Keeping MJ's face in his mind, recalling how much he loved her, Spider-man felt his own pain receding. He launched himself now at Norton as well. Using his webbing to bind him much like he had done Barry earlier.

Yet there was still enough negative energy from the non-helpful crowd to give Norton the strength to rip through the webbing. He called out more insults, but they just bounced off Spider-  
man, he didn't even hear them. Barry came alongside Spider-man. Sandra was yelling at the crowd, telling them to either fight or leave. Either way, just stop standing there being useless.

"We need to get him away from this crowd." Spider-man said. "They're giving him just what he needs."

Barry just nodded, then like Mr. Fantastic, stretched himself out and around Norton. Trying to haul him on top of a building. Norton responded by punching Barry in the face. The mutant's grip loosened just a bit. Norton tried to wiggle out but Spider-man webbed Norton's feet together and Sandra ran up and slammed the flat of her hand into Norton's nose. Blood gushed forth from the offended facial part.

Tightening his grip again, Barry began to lift Norton up as before. To retaliate Norton grabbed Sandra by the hair. She screamed in pain and Barry hesitated. Spider-man shot his webbing out and helped lifted her up so they could continue on their way. The wall crawler did not like taking a normal human with no real fighting skills along with them, but Norton wasn't going to let go anytime soon and they needed to hurry for he was starting to get stronger again.

The fight went from one building roof to the next. Norton would try to get away, get back to the crowd. Spider-man or Barry would fling him to the next roof. Sandra was left far behind. Spider-  
man kept thinking of MJ. Their first kiss. Their wedding day. Every good moment that reminded him how much he loved her.

With each thought he could see Norton getting weaker. When Norton tried to call out an insult,  
Spider-man would shrug it off. Barry seemed to also be able to shrug it off.

More then that, Spider-man was suddenly spouting more witty stuff. Not his usual stuff, but when Norton missed him Spidy couldn't help saying "You missed me, you missed me, now you gotta kiss me. Um - ew. Nevermind." And when Norton got too close for comfort, Spider-man said, "Want an Altoid?"

Norton began to grow more wrinkled, fatter, his hair turned snow white, then began to fall out.  
He stumbled. Barry slammed his fists into him, pinning Norton against a large air vent.

"Why?" Barry asked. "Why did you kill them?"

Norton, looking like what the picture of Dorian Gray must've looked like in Oscar Wilde's mind, laughed wheezingly. "It was why I was created. To kill mutants. Me, and the others."

"How many others?" Barry demanded. "How many are there of you?"

"I - I don't know. Three I know of, counting me. Spider-man's already eliminated two."

"That's not true." Spider-man said. "Kim killed her brother by absorbing him into herself to stop him. Then she killed herself."

"What did you do to the twins?" Shaking Norton, Barry growled.

Norton coughed, he had suddenly gone bone thin. "I cut their throats, dumped them in the sewers beneath the school. They were useless to me. Same with Ash. I got all they could from them"  
He laughed. "You and Sandra were such a feast."

With a final sputtering cough, Norton died and crumbled to dust.

The bully had been defeated by the most powerful weapon in the world. Love.

"He must've picked on you because he needed what you could give him." Barry was saying, his arm around Sandra's shoulders. "While the rest of us were picked on because we were mutants."

"I've never gotten over what they did to me." Sandra said softly. "I was going to confront him myself tonight. Confront all of them. Spider-man stopped me."

They looked to Spider-man who was standing off to one side. Just taking a breather before returning to MJ. "I was bullied too, when I was a kid."

"How'd you ever get over it?" Sandra asked, cuddling closer to her high school sweetheart.

Under his mask Spider-man smiled. "I was bit by a radio active spider."

"No, seriously." Sandra said, not falling for the famed Spider-man wit.

"Seriously?" The web slinger said. "The love of a good woman."

With one quick swing, Spider-man was gone. Leaving two people with injured souls to heal each other.

He had to get back to his own personal doctor of love.

The End 


End file.
